It is necessary, for purposes of analytical testing of semiconductor circuits and electronic components, to make physical contact to a circuit with a metal probe which can conduct electricity to and from the device. Tools or “analytical wafer probing systems” which are designed primarily to provide a platform to hold semiconductor wafers and support high precision mechanical or motorized control positioners (or commonly called “manipulators”) with attached very sharp needle probes (or micro-probes) for the purpose of making such contact and conducting electricity to and from the semiconductor device are commonplace in the semiconductor industry.
The design focus of these analytical wafer probing systems has so far primarily been to conduct electrical testing on circuits in the “wafer” stage of semiconductor manufacturing, before they are placed into a “package”. This “package” is a structure that supports the circuit and which contains frames, wires and contacts from the circuit which can be connected to components, wires or electrical sockets on an external printed circuit board or electronic appliance. Once packaged, the semiconductor circuit is typically referred to as a “packaged device”. Packaged devices that have been opened up (exposing circuitry) are occasionally probed to test the individual device independently (physically and/or electrically) of other components that operate in conjunction with the device for use in its final application.
With the advent of more complicated and multi-function semiconductor circuits and the accompanying complexity of associated electronic circuits—memory, power supplies, logic and transmission circuits for example, the need do analytical probing testing on packaged devices which are mounted on “test” or “application” boards has become essential. This is so that tests may be conducted which include the impact of associated electronics and which are furthermore done under actual use conditions or as close to those conditions as possible, referred to as “mission mode”.
Such mission mode testing of packaged devices has heretofore been done on an analytical probing system designed for wafers. This impacts the utility and limits the capability of the analytical probing application in several ways. What is required is an improved device and method for testing of electronic circuits, in particular packaged devices.